According to Plan

 

Update 1/29: I'm not going to devote an entire post to this but it should be noted that this was literally (and in both senses) a day of Chaos throughout the United States. It is when the possible extent of the White House order to stop federal spending became clear--especially when the Medicaid portal that handles all payments including pay to medical workers went down for all 50 states--that state governments and people around the country went ballistic. Every imaginable program could be affected, and the finances of individual states could collapse. No external enemy could do so much damage so quickly.

 Many news outlets noted that "confusion" resulted, and the Washington Post used the word "chaos." This is the latest in a series of blatantly illegal and unconstitutional orders, apart from the written order itself being nonsense.  A federal judge late in the day stopped it temporarily, while a number of states officially took it to court, and the White House started backing away.

The story isn't over, and this blog isn't a newspaper so I leave it to you to follow it.  But the potential of today was and is for a terminal constitutional crisis.  There are some weapons that Democrats in Congress can use to maybe frustrate the administration, but the fact is that if Chaos insists on this--or any other of his huge power grabs--he can go all the way, including defying a Supreme Court decision.  Because the only remedy the Constitution provides for this lawlessness is impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate.  And especially in these early days, how likely is that?...And by the way, who would that put into power?

Saturday:

Just after the November election, Margaret Atwood was asked what she thought of it.  "They elected him," she said, of the US.  "Now we'll see how they like it."

How do you like it so far?  Because not even a week into his term, it's all going according to plan.  Chaos freed his violent seditionist convicted felons, including leaders of national white supremacist gangs, so he's got a loyal infrastructure for a new version of brownshirt thugs that created chaos in Germany, or the blackshirts that did the same in Italy in the 1930s.  He's wiped the federal database of all information related to the insurrection crimes.  It never happened. Orwell, anyone?

He's installed a fall-down, blackout drunk and sexual predator to head the Pentagon and get rid of everyone not declaring fealty to Chaos, with the hope of a new military of white male supremacists who will just follow orders.  He's ordering active military troops to the border with a legally questionable mission.  He suddenly fired Inspector Generals of a number of agencies, while his other incompetent appointees are fanning out to spawn Chaos across the federal government, and therefore the country and the world.

He has ordered diversity programs of the federal government stopped cold, and sent home anyone engaged in them. His minions insist federal employees spy on each other and turn in anyone insufficiently zealous in their devotion to Chaos--it's back to the fifties for Washington, except it's the fifties of East Germany, and the Kremlin on the Potomac.

He's sealed the borders to any immigrants from anywhere, unless perhaps Musk wants a few.  His raids into immigrant communities were postponed when the news media found out about them in advance, because he wants them to be a viral surprise. His immigration enforcer is the guy who designed family separations the last time around.  How are those kids doing? 

He's making friends around the world by cutting off foreign aid and reneging on promised programs that these countries have planned for and allocated their own resources. He's threatened such traditional enemies as Canada, Mexico and Denmark, prompting the president of Denmark to warn him to keep his mitts off Greenland and inspiring him to be the first in international diplomacy to in these very words tell the president of the US to fuck off. 

He's promised economic Chaos on February 1 by forecasting tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China--which happen to be the three countries that supply this country with the most and most necessary goods that American industries and businesses depend on, not to mention people.  Companies that sell these things to Americans seldom have as good an excuse to raise prices than this.  If it all comes to pass, the only question is how long it will take the ripple effects to cripple the US economy, or at least cause major Chaos. Canada has already promised an immediate set of targeted reprisals if he follows through. 

He's visited the sites of recent natural disasters, after again withdrawing from the Paris Accords and otherwise deep-sixing efforts to address the very climate crisis that contributed to them, and will continue to amp up future natural disasters.  He gives the governor of California a hug and promises aid, and then goes to North Carolina to announce that California aid won't be coming unless the state changes how it runs its elections--another little precedent broken. Then he threatens to completely close down the federal agency that responds to these disasters.

Update 1/28: Chaos freezes on funds throughout the US government and abroad now include ongoing programs to monitor and address bird flu and a host of communicable diseases in other countries that have the potential of becoming pandemics.

Thanks to this domestic blitzkrieg, few have even noticed that Chaos is back in business with his son in law to build a luxury hotel in Serbia.  He's also busy promoting cryptocurrency and blockchains to make himself billions.  If his tariff and other efforts don't cause an economic depression, cryptocurrency is certainly up to the job of creating financial catastrophe overnight.

And on a completely unrelated matter, there's an article in the Atlantic detailing how Hitler dismantled democracy in Germany as elected head of the country--in 53 days.